The Prisoner
by OliveBranchStories
Summary: Arthur, a soldier, has a discussion through a wire fence with a prisoner in a concentration camp about what's right, what's wrong, never giving up and never letting go. One shot. Inspired by 'The Book Thief.'


This story was inspired by 'The Book Thief' written by Markus Zusak. I also listened to watch?v=yLrQs3zpFpw quite a bit as I wrote it, though I don't speak Russian and I am fairly certain that's in Russian. Either way, it's very haunting.

always assassinates layout for me, ah well. Hope it still looks presentable.

It was a step sidewards in writing styles for me, I hope you like it.

"You alright?"

Arthur immediately tried to stop crying and didn't respond; hoping the voice and its owner would go away.

"Hey, are you alright?"

Arthur heard the slight rattling of the wire fence as somebody leant against it.

"Go away, soldier," Arthur snapped, taking refuge in his high rank he'd been awarded thanks to his father to boss people around. Well, boss them around and actually have the capability of backing up said bossing.

"I don't really have anywhere to go," the voice said lightly and the fence creaked as whoever it was leant against it, "And I'm not a soldier."

Arthur's head snapped around even though his eyes were still raw and wanted to remain hidden. A prisoner was leaning against the fence, tall and thin, lithe to the point of emaciation, looking at him with a kind smile and concern in his eyes. He was, like all of the other prisoners, dirty. A greasy mixture of sweat and blood and soil had worked its way into his skin, a mixture harder to remove then scars.

"Get off the fence, prisoner," Arthur ordered, falling back on the habits drilled into him in army training when his shock at the identity of his addressee made his mind fail him.

The prisoner rocked back on his heels and waved his open palms to illustrate how much they weren't touching the fence with an expression simultaneously resigned and exasperated.

"Are you alright?" He asked again, maddeningly.

"Rack off," Arthur swung the muzzle of his gun warningly towards the prisoner, but the only wariness he betrayed was in how his eyes followed it for a moment. Determinedly drawing his eyes away from the guns barrel the prisoner looked back at Arthur.

"You don't look alright," he said conversationally, gesturing at Arthur's face, "what with the crying and all."

"I was_ not_ crying," Arthur snapped, "get back to your quarters before I have you reported."

"It looked like crying," the prisoner said conversationally, leaning on the wire. At the wave of Arthur's gun he straightened up again and continued.

"But then you Nazi's may have developed some other purpose for tears. Like…maybe it's a code…or some sort of secret weaponry…"

Arthur stared in disbelief at the prisoner, who kept rattling off potential ulterior uses for tears.

"Okay fine," he snapped when the prisoner started talking about secret water rations, "I was crying, fine, would you shut up?"

"Why were you crying?" The prisoner asked immediately, shoving his hands into his pockets. His scrappy pants were so old and beaten a few of his fingers waved through holes in the bottom of the pockets.

"None of your business," Arthur coughed, not wanting to sniff but needing to rid himself of some excess phlegm, "rack off."

"But it is my business," the prisoner, really he was just a boy; he must be younger than Arthur, said.

"Who else are you going to talk to?"

"Um," Arthur said in mock concentration, "not a Jew, probably."

The prisoner gave a wry smile of mild amusement, as if Arthur had just discerned that he was a Jew without the evidence of the fences around him and the big yellow badge marking him. Damning him.

"I don't expect a big tough soldier like you…" Arthur was slightly offended by the miming of 'big tough soldier' that accompanied the words, "…would exactly talk to your big tough soldier friends about something that's upsetting you. Unless it's like 'Oh, my gun fires thirty rounds a minute but this guy in 4th Unit has one that fires thirty-five!"

He didn't say it mockingly; he wasn't attacking Arthur as much as Arthur was looking for potential spite in his words. The prisoner spoke with a small, kind smile on his lips and, despite the fact that the joke was about the Nazis, sounded slightly self-deprecating.

"What do you care?" Arthur snapped, not entirely sure why he was letting himself get drawn into a conversation with this strange prisoner. He quickly looked left and right, making sure there were no soldiers nearby watching him talk to this tattered excuse for a boy. There was no one, only him and his prisoner.

A chimney stuck out of a hill in the distance like a watchtower watching them.

"When someone sees someone else who is upset…well," the prisoner shrugged, "it's human nature to want to help."

"I'm a Nazi," Arthur said, his blond hair ruler-straight and his blue eyes glaring, gesturing at his immaculate uniform with his gun, pointing at the swastika which clung to his uniform, viscous like tar, blade-black marks tattooed to him like shame.

"You're a Jew," Arthur poked the barrel of his gun through the fence, making it rattle between them, at the fraying yellow star on the prisoner's shoulder.

"Yeah," the prisoner said bafflingly, or baffled, Arthur wasn't sure, "so?"

"So?" Arthur sputtered, "You're being kept a prisoner in a concentration camp by the Nazis, you don't want to help me; you have some ulterior motive."

The prisoner raised his eyebrows into his lanky black hair.

"I'm in prison though I committed no crime, half-starved, with the only exciting thing awaiting me being the discovery of what method will be used to execute me; be it being shot, beaten or gassed…and _I _have the ulterior motive?"

He placed a hand on his chest, the picture of indignation. Arthur couldn't hear any accusation in his tone, but where the prisoner had outlined his innocence, Arthur's guilt was audible in the silence.

His guilt went without being said.

Arthur didn't understand this being and not understanding made him wary; he didn't know what he should be ready for, what this Jew might try.

"Why don't you try me?" The prisoner leant on the fence, jerking backwards again at Arthur's threatening gun, "If I am not a good enough listener or if you think I am going to tell anyone you can just shoot me."

His eyes flicked down to the gun with an expression of distaste. Arthur suddenly felt a ridiculously protective surge of feeling for his weapon.

He was obviously going mad.

Whilst armed.

Brilliant.

"No one will ask any questions," The prisoner continued when Arthur remained silent, "or at least no one who you can't shoot to shut them up."

"You…have a point," Arthur said reluctantly. The prisoner smiled through cracked lips, a wind wisping around them, distant clouds promising rain.

It was winter at the moment.

It had been winter for a very long time.

When Arthur failed to say anything else the prisoner gestured impatiently.

"Well go on, shoot!" Then his expression twitched itself in surprise, "well…don't _shoot _obviously. Speak, is what I meant."

Not sure what else to do Arthur resorted to looking confused.

"One has to be so careful with words when one is at war," the prisoner said, resting back on his heels. "I mean, the other day I was like 'This gruel makes me want to _explode_ with happiness,' and everyone hit the deck."

Arthur raised an eyebrow.

"So, as I was saying," the prisoner gestured to Arthur, "speak."

"I give the orders around here," Arthur reminded him, "being the guy with the gun."

He waved said gun. The prisoner rolled his eyes, clearly terrified of Arthur's show of authority.

"And I am _choosing _to tell you…"

"Of course, of course," the prisoner bobbed his head in possibly sarcastic agreement.

"I'm not doing so because you want me to."

"No, never."

"Well," Arthur sighed, why was he telling a prisoner this? Probably because he was the only one who would listen, he was a captive audience, after all.

"This is going to sound so trivial…"

"You were upset about it," the prisoner said, losing his joking air, "obviously it isn't trivial to you."

"No…" Arthur looked anywhere but at the prisoner, which wasn't hard as he was so skinny he could've vanished in thin air if he tried to, or even if he just forgot to make an effort to remain present.

"My mother just left my father."

"I'm sorry," the prisoner said genuinely.

"Yeah well, so am I," Arthur said bitterly, stamping a boot into the ground and trying to focus on the dying plants at his feet. His eyes didn't want to see.

"Do you know why?" The prisoner asked gently whilst stepping up to the fence but being careful not to touch it.

"Yeah," Arthur said noncommittally, doubts and shame sitting in his stomach like a feeling he couldn't digest. But that just made him feel worse…this prisoner had obviously had nothing significant to digest for a long time, literally.

He looked away across the camp, avoiding the prisoner's eyes, suddenly fearful the truth would write itself on his face and the Jew would hate him. (Why this was a bad thing he didn't understand, he just knew that in the past few minutes this boy had listened to him more than his father ever had in his entire life.)

The prisoners were alive, somewhere out of sight, hiding their lives as if that could save them.

The camp was dead.

"If you try to see the situation from her perspective it may help you understand, which may help you cope."

A cold breeze blew over the prisoner's shoulder into Arthur's face. It smelt and salt and sadness, Arthur didn't know what hope smelt like.

"What would you know," he exhaled into the wind.

"My family was separated as well," the prisoner said; the words sounded like they didn't want to come out of his throat. Arthur looked up at him.

"Why?" He asked, as if the prisoner could somehow shed light on the situation between Arthur's parents by talking about his.

The prisoner sighed and dropped his eyes, avoiding Arthur's gaze as Arthur had avoided his. He took a breath that seemed to steady him then looked up solemnly. His casual smile was missing.

"The Nazis were killing everyone," his voice was a whisper, as if he was trying not to wake the ghosts.

Arthur tugged his mouth into a bitter smile because any other expression would be too painful. The prisoner frowned and straightened his back like a dog raising its hackles until Arthur's next sentence,

"Funnily enough, that's the same reason my parents separated."

He made a question mark with his face.

"My father…" Arthur felt like he was facing a firing squad, but it was time to, as they say, bite the bullet. "Runs this camp…I'm his son…"

The prisoner's face darkened for a moment and his hands, now dangling out of his pockets, twitched like they wanted to form fists. He forced his head up, his throating working hard, swallowing the tears back. It might rain later. It might rain now.

The prisoner lowered his head and breathed; his expression cleared and his hands forcibly relaxed themselves.

"Yeah?" He said encouragingly, the light tone coming with a slight tremble of effort.

"_Yeah?_ That's it? Don't you hate me?" Arthur said, shocked and apprehensive. The prisoner smiled to himself in a sad way and shook his head, his lanky black hair falling like crow feathers into his eyes.

"No," he said, "hating you would be the easy option."

"The easy option? As opposed to what?"

"Getting to know you," the prisoner leaned against the wire fence. Arthur didn't object, just stared at him for a long, long moment. A single, fat teardrop of rain hit the back of his neck and rolled down his ironed collar, making him blink and look up at the heavy, grey clouds falling towards them off the mountains.

"Anyway, um…my mother didn't like the things he was doing…didn't like the people he was supporting."

"Smart woman," the prisoner said calmly. Arthur's eyes snapped up suspicious of a jape but none were present.

"She tried talking to him but he wouldn't listen. Eventually she'd had enough. What he was doing, her inability to stop it. It was all too much…so she left."

The prisoner nodded and was looking closely at Arthur in a terrifyingly perception fashion, as if he was learning all of his secrets…learning things about Arthur that he didn't even know.

"Did you think about going with her?" The prisoner asked.

"I couldn't, I'm part of the army," Arthur responded flatly as if this brooked no argument.

The prisoner rubbed his hands together, seemingly trying to find a way to put whatever it was he was thinking into words. Waiting for him to speak Arthur watched the long, thin hands; he wondered why there was blood beneath his nails, but then decided that he didn't want to know. He could probably have guessed.

Sometimes he wished he couldn't think.

"So that's the only reason you stayed?"

Arthur shrugged. It really was absurd, having this discussion with a Jew in a concentration camp his father ran.

"Pretty much."

The prisoner pursed his lips and raised his eyebrows but was looking politely away from Arthur and at his hands again.

"Oh what is it?" Irritated, Arthur snapped at the prisoner's obvious scepticism.

"It just doesn't seem like a very good reason," the prisoner parted his hands in a small simple gesture of honesty.

"You don't understand," Arthur bristled, "My father ordered me!"

"I've been told to do a whole lot of anatomically unrealistic things I'd rather not do since the war began. But words only have the power you give them."

"These aren't just words," Arthur insisted, unknowingly assuming an 'at attention' stance. "These are orders."

"Orders are still just words. Words that won't stop you from walking away from all this," the prisoner crossed his arms and flicked his gaze at the razor wire at the top of the fence. He then muttered something to himself, which may or may not have been '_or possibly running._'

"Orders are more than words. If I disobey orders I'll be arrested, I could be charged for desertion."

"There are worse things than dying for a cause you believe in," the prisoner stated.

"Oh yeah," Arthur said, "like what?"

He expected the prisoner to make a reference to the concentration camp, to the situation he was in, to the life he was leading and how he probably wouldn't be leading it for much longer. Instead the prisoner just looked at Arthur sadly and said, in an unwavering voice,

"Like fighting for a cause you don't believe in."

Arthur's expression thundered…or had that been the storm clouds?

"Like fighting for a cause that's _wrong_."

They were silent for a moment.

"What makes you think I don't believe in what I am fighting for?" Arthur asked defensively, a little scared. His father hadn't noticed, hadn't he? But wait, if Arthur was worried his father had noticed didn't that mean there was something to notice?

"Do you?"

Did he believe in what he was fighting for?

The conversation paused again.

"You're very weird, you know that?" Arthur said, not sure if he was trying to make a joke or an insult. The prisoner smiled at him; joke it was, then.

"What makes you say that?"

Arthur laughed a sad, crazy sort of chuckle, with an expansive gesture at the fence. When the laugh had left him he then sobered and said.

"If you're fighting for something you don't believe in, well, at least it's better than being dead, isn't it? I mean, at least your alive."

"I guess that depends on how you define 'alive,' it depends on what you value about life," the prisoner rolled the shoulder he was leaning against the cold metal. The metal was immovable, so he wobbled and nearly lost his balance.

"To me, life is more than being physically alive. There is more to life then breathing and eating and waking up in the morning and going to sleep at night."

"Those are key elements, though," Arthur quipped with a half-smile. The prisoner waved his comment away physically, like they were flies.

"They are a means to an end. The end is…" he searched for words again, "The end is the purpose. Saying that the purpose of life is to breathe and sleep and such is the same as saying that the purpose of life is to be alive."

"Isn't it?" Arthur asked, slightly confused.

"Of course not," the prisoner insisted as if this were obvious, "Don't they teach you Nazis _anything_ at Nazi camp?"

"Nazi camp?" Arthur said dubiously. The prisoner flapped his hands distractedly; he really did get quite physical when he spoke.

"Wherever it is that you're trained up to be Nazis. Anyway, forget that, the purpose of life is not to just _be alive._ If that was so we would be like dogs or horses or rats. Animals live to be alive. But humans are different; we have consciousness, awareness, morals, ethics. We have knowledge of what's right and wrong and because of that knowledge we have a duty to do right by each other, to strive for and fight for what is right."

"You have a lot of spare time to think in there, don't you?" Arthur said, looking at the tall, sharp fence that scratched at the sky like an insult. The ground inside was mud and dust and the plants were dead or dying. It didn't seem like a place conductive to thinking or dreaming, but then, sometimes they are the most thought provoking places.

"Are you listening to a word I am saying?" the prisoner snapped. Uncharacteristically, Arthur did not snap in response. Instead his shoulders caved in slightly.

"I'm sorry…I've just, never been very good at philosophy, it always seemed a little abstract and irrelevant to me. I was better at learning to fight, to shoot."

"This isn't abstract philosophy," the prisoner said, calming down as he realised Arthur hadn't been trying to mock him. "This is about morals, ethics. Morals aren't abstracts, morals are reality. Fighting, shooting…those skills are pointless, even harmful, without morals to guide them."

"I don't need moral guidance, though," Arthur said, "I have orders to guide me."

The prisoner grasped the wire fence in his hands with an expression so pained, so intense, it was like he wanted to crawl through the wire to shake Arthur and _make _him understand. Maybe he did.

"But orders are supposed to be guided by ethics as well! And when they aren't, like now, it's people who don't think for themselves who give them power! _Question them. _What is the _point_ of fighting? What are you fighting _for_? You should be fighting for what is right, not what somebody told you is right!"

"But what if you don't know what is right?" Arthur responded in a similarly intense voice, "shouldn't you then follow the orders of someone who does?"

"How do you _know _they know what's right?"

Arthur shook his head.

"You're making this needlessly confusing."

"You're taking the easy way out!" The prisoner was snarling against the fence. For a moment Arthur was able to despise him, was able to snarl, "I don't need this!" and turn to walk away.

"Who could need a discussion on right and wrong _more_ than someone doing the wrong thing?"

Arthur looked back at the prisoner. The prisoner hadn't moved, he was still clinging to the fence as though he still had a chance at pulling Arthur back and convincing him, as though it was the only thing stopping him from doing just that.

"I'm not doing the wrong thing," Arthur said uncertainly.

The prisoner leant his head against the fence and for a moment, looked tired, looked exhausted. Arthur felt a sudden fear that he was about to lie down and die as words like 'starvation' and 'malnourishment' sprang to mind. But then the prisoner was looking up at him, right at him, pinning him with the strength of his gaze. There was nothing weak in his eyes.

"Yes," he said, "you are."

Arthur took a step back towards him. Threatening, listening, it didn't matter, it all amounted to the same, he was returning to the Jew.

"All of the Nazis are. They kill and torture and commit genocide…and you're one of them."

"I never supported the genocide," Arthur said stiffly in uncertain self-defence.

"You support the Nazis, the Nazis commit genocide," the prisoner said. Arthur felt sick in his stomach, sick in his soul, sick in places that couldn't heal, that would be sick forever.

"My father…there's no way out…"

There's no way out. Four words, well, four and half depending on how one counted abbreviations. Four words that revealed that Arthur knew there was something wrong, something he had to find a way out of.

"Yes there is," the prisoner said, an offering of hope in his voice.

"Where?"

The prisoner pointed at Arthur's feet.

"Right there, you've got two of them."

Arthur looked at down at his feet as if expecting the prisoner to be pointing at something he hadn't previously noticed on the ends of his legs. Just his feet? It was a little disappointing.

"Nobody is _forcing_ you to do this. Nobody is _forcing _you to stay. You stay and keep innocents prisoner because somebody is telling you to," the prisoner eyed him shrewdly; "You don't even seem to believe it. I'm not sure what's worse, somebody locking up people because they hate them or somebody locking up people because they don't have a good reason not to."

"I'll get killed if I go," Arthur whispered, even though, if truth be told, his father would make every effort to return him without arrest, let alone execution, should Arthur up and leave.

"You may be physically killed if you leave, but a much worse fate awaits you if you stay. You might physically live; but in killing and torturing…in supporting mass murder and war and genocide…you'll tear your soul apart."

Arthur snorted bitterly.

"Souls, what worth is a soul to me when I am dead?"

"What use is your body to you when you are dead? Everyone will die one day; sooner or later physical bodies _will _deteriorate and die. But your soul _is _you. You can choose the state your soul is in and what it will be like _forever_. You can choose if the life you live is _worth living_."

"I take it you believe in," Arthur waved at the sky, "heaven."

They both looked up, as if they could see it, as if it was just over the storm clouds.

Tangible.

Touchable.

Just out of reach (or just within it.)

"No matter what you believe in, afterlife or not, doing what's right makes sense. If there is an afterlife, fight for what's right when you're alive and then rest when you die. If there is no afterlife, well there's no point to anything, because every moment passes and exists only in memory and if there is nothing after death there is no memory. Everything you did for yourself would be worthless. However your worth can live on if, when alive, you help other people."

Arthur scuffed the butt of his gun in the dirt, after making sure the safety catch was on, of course.

"For a guy on the wrong side of the fence you seem to have a pretty abstract philosophy about mortality. I'd've thought that a guy like you would've had to face it by now."

But Arthur knew the prisoner would've had to face death by now, would've not just heard deaths nearby breathing but felt its breath, felt its teeth at his throat, maybe.

"It doesn't seem like a very reassuring argument in the face of imminent death," Arthur stated.

"If it wasn't a reassuring argument, don't you think I'd be among the first to know? Being the one facing imminent death and all?" The prisoner asked with a small grin. Arthur looked at that grin and thought about gun shots and gas-chambers and showers that weren't showers and did _not _want to cry.

"How can you be so relaxed? How can you not hate me or the world or anything?"

"I do hate some things," the prisoner said, not smiling any more. "I hate the war, I hate this situation. I hate the things some people do and I hate that I am so powerless to stop them. But I don't hate _you_; I don't hate _the world. _Hate like that would just make me bitter. I don't want to live a miserable life; I don't want to die without having helped people, without having been happy."

"I don't understand you," Arthur said, when what he wanted to say was '_I don't want you to die.'_ He'd just met the boy…he would put down his emotional state to the fact that he was still in shock over his parents separation. That's what he'd do.

"I don't understand myself sometimes," the prisoner said, putting his hands back in his pockets.

Arthur looked at the boy…the sickening soil between his toes, the blood and dirt ingrained in the wrinkles of his face, the way his bones stuck out of his body like rocks from the ocean covered in a thin film of water. The boy had crows-feet in the corner of his eyes; he'd smiled a lot in his life.

Arthur looked beyond him. There was smoke joining the clouds. Somewhere, something was burning. Were there gas chambers somewhere at work? Were there people somewhere burning? Did the sight of columns of smoke, his ashen people, haunt this man?

"I don't understand the world sometimes."

Arthur looked back at the Jew. He'd followed Arthur's gaze to the smoke in the distance and Arthur could see on his face that yes, of course, the columns of smoke haunted him. Haunted him in every way something can haunt a person.

"I could leave, like you said, I could run away," Arthur said softly, pushing the barrel of his gun into the ground, "but I think I'll stay."

The prisoner looked back at him, waiting.

"Running away is the easy way out. I can't change anything if I leave."

The prisoner smiled.

Arthur would never see the prisoner again.

He tried to find him. He was halfway through flicking down a list of the prisoners names when he realised it was pointless. He didn't even know the prisoners name.

Standing the same post Arthur waited but the prisoner never returned. Under some pretence of a routine examination Arthur searched the camp for the prisoner, he combed it, but he couldn't find him.

After he searched and couldn't find the boy the smoke haunted Arthur as well. He smelt it all day and saw it all night, even when his eyes were closed and his fingers were stuffed in his ears.

Prisoners didn't enter or leave the camp regularly, but it wasn't uncommon. Arthur tried to find out where the prisoner had gone, if he had gone, but there were only lists of numbers leading him along paper trails that led him nowhere.

He felt the loss keenly. He barely knew the boy, he'd only met him once, he'd only talked to him one. But the logic of it didn't stop him sinking into despondency. With his mind preoccupied with misery he almost fell back onto instinct, almost fell back onto his training as a soldier.

Walk. Stop. Order. Beat. Hurt. Shoot. Don't feel.

Kill.

Kill.

Kill.

But some other instinct the conversation with the prisoner had awoken wouldn't be silent nor would it be silenced. It wouldn't let the training rule him. It fought and fought even when he had no fight left in him. It beat back his laziness, wielding the memory of the prisoner like a sword, like a fire in the dark.

Slowly, Arthur began thinking again. And if his thinking involved him thoughtlessly dropping his food in the dust of the camp when he was walking through the camp, well…thinking is hard work.

Almost as hard work as living is.

An idea born in the night and nightmares began to grow in Arthur's mind. It grew slowly, as though it knew the slightest sign could betray it and it had to wait for Arthur to be able to hide it from the world completely before giving him more to hide.

Gradually, gradually, Arthur had a plan and gradually, gradually, he put it into fruition.

He went to his father. He knew he would not succeed in changing his father's mind, if his mother couldn't no one could, so instead Arthur set about deceiving him.

His father was blind; as soon as Arthur showed a slight interest in following in his footsteps his father noticed nothing but his pride.

Slowly Arthur was given more and more responsibility in the running of the concentration camp; more and more power. And it took a lot of concentration.

Of course he wasn't _great _at it; somehow he spent all of the money his father had carefully been saving for the construction of a death chamber so they could not afford one.

Arthur was terribly disappointed. So disappointed he lost his temper wildly when he found some soldiers beating a child. The soldiers were so stunned and scared by his complete loss of temper that they dared not ever lay another hand on another prisoner, even when Arthur apologised under the stern eye of his father. But then his apology may not have meant much as, when his father had turned away, satisfied, Arthur had drawn a finger across his throat whilst glaring at the soldiers like a maniac.

The more his father gave him power over the camp the fewer prisoners were killed or sent to their deaths. Arthur had to be careful; he had to be very, very careful, lest someone notice his secret sympathies and rob him of his power to protect these people. It was difficult, there was nobody who he could trust or ask for help, but he did it. He managed it. He found reserves he hadn't known he had, suspected he hadn't had before, and was able to be paid as a dutiful Nazi to protect the Jews.

And it all came from that one conversation with a prisoner, who'd spoken only because he'd seen somebody who was upset and thought he could help. Arthur knew now the prisoner had never had ulterior motives. He hadn't known Arthur was anything more than a soldier, so he couldn't have been trying to befriend him to turn him against his father.

He hadn't known his one act of selfless kindness would result in six prisoners under threat of imminent execution finding ways, no matter how unplanned or improvised, to successfully escape the concentration camp and disappear into the world beyond.

He hadn't known his one act of selfless kindness would result in three hundred and four Jews emerging, hungry but alive, from the camp at the end of the war, free from the clutches of the country, their country, which had turned on them and tried to eat them alive.

Sometimes at night Arthur, when the memory of gunfire and bombs were loud in his ears and he had to escape, Arthur would race outside into the darkness, panting and gasping and maybe crying, just a little bit.

He wondered if the prisoner had survived. Whenever he wondered this dread would fill him until he wanted to vomit out the darkness he felt living within him.

He felt, in every bone of his body, that the prisoner had been shot or beaten or lead, knowingly, into a gas chamber to his death. He could almost feel the prisoners despair and hatred at such an early death, such unnecessary, unjust suffering. He could almost feel the resolution to take the hands of the scared and helpless around him and try to offer them some meagre comfort at the end.

He felt, deep in his bones, that the prisoner hadn't survived.

But his heart was not a bone, and hence was not restricted to such feelings. Whenever he wondered if the prisoner had survived and dreaded that he had died Arthur's heart clenched in the painful way hope has of grabbing you and never letting you go.

And he believed.


End file.
